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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
Study finds natural sources of air pollution...
Alongside climate change, air pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats to human health. Tiny particles known as particulate matter or PM2.5 (named for their diameter of just 2.5 micrometers or less) are a particularly hazardous type of pollutant. These particles are produced from a variety of sources, including wildfires and the burning of fossil fuels, and can enter our bloodstream, travel deep into our lungs, and cause respiratory and cardiovascular damage. Exposure to particulate matter is responsible...

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Study: Trade can worsen income inequality
International trade exacerbates domestic income inequality, at least in some circumstances, according to an empirical study that two MIT economists helped co-author. The research, focusing on Ecuador as a case study, digs into individual-level income data while examining in close detail the connections between Ecuador’s economy and international trade. The study finds that trade generates income gains that are about 7 percent greater for those at the 90th income percentile, compared to those of median income, and up to...

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Faster computing results without fear of errors
Researchers have pioneered a technique that can dramatically accelerate certain types of computer programs automatically, while ensuring program results remain accurate. Their system boosts the speeds of programs that run in the Unix shell, a ubiquitous programming environment created 50 years ago that is still widely used today. Their method parallelizes these programs, which means that it splits program components into pieces that can be run simultaneously on multiple computer processors. This enables programs to execute tasks like web...

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Mobilizing across borders to address global challenges
For the most creative minds to work together to solve the world’s greatest challenges, it is essential for global collaboration to be unencumbered by distance. The MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Global Seed Funds (GSF) program enables participating faculty teams to collaborate across borders with international partners to develop and launch joint research projects. MISTI GSF is comprised of a general fund, open to any country, and a number of country-, region-, or university-specific funds. The resulting...

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Hallucinating to better text translation
As babies, we babble and imitate our way to learning languages. We don’t start off reading raw text, which requires fundamental knowledge and understanding about the world, as well as the advanced ability to interpret and infer descriptions and relationships. Rather, humans begin our language journey slowly, by pointing and interacting with our environment, basing our words and perceiving their meaning through the context of the physical and social world. Eventually, we can craft full sentences to communicate complex...

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Molecules found in mucus can thwart fungal...
Candida albicans is a yeast that often lives in the human digestive tract and mouth, as well as urinary and reproductive organs. Usually, it doesn’t cause disease in its host, but under certain conditions, it can switch to a harmful form. Most Candida infections are not lethal, but systemic Candida infection, which affects the blood, heart, and other parts of the body, can be life-threatening. MIT researchers have now identified components of mucus that can interact with Candida albicans...

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MIT Corporation elects nine term members, three...
The MIT Corporation — the Institute’s board of trustees — has elected nine full-term members, who will each serve for five years; and three life members. Corporation Chair Diane Greene SM ’78 announced the election results; all positions are effective July 1. The nine full-term members are: Noubar Afeyan PhD ’87; Rafael del Pino SM ’86; José Antonio Fernández Carbajal; Danielle A. Geathers ‘22; William A. Gilchrist ’77, MArch ’82, SM ’82; Darryll J. Pines SM ’88, PhD ’92;...

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Helping dairy farmers raise healthy cows
Dairy farmers around the world have an information problem. To get the most accurate measurements of cow health and milk quality, many have to ship milk samples to labs or wait for a technician to come to the farm to collect milk samples from each cow. Now Labby, a startup founded by two MIT alumni, is helping farmers get a clearer picture of their cows’ health with a device that can test milk from individual cows in less than...

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Making the case for “fake lawyering”
Most people wouldn’t put the words “MIT” and “lawyer” in the same sentence. In fact, only 1,393 alumni — about 1 percent — are lawyers, according to the MIT Alumni Association. But a contingent of MIT undergraduates is steadily earning a reputation for its prowess in “fake lawyering.” That’s how head coach Brian Pilchik describes the premise of the MIT Mock Trial program, which consists of a group of about 30 students that competes against other colleges around the...

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Making data visualization more accessible for blind...
Data visualizations on the web are largely inaccessible for blind and low-vision individuals who use screen readers, an assistive technology that reads on-screen elements as text-to-speech. This excludes millions of people from the opportunity to probe and interpret insights that are often presented through charts, such as election results, health statistics, and economic indicators.  When a designer attempts to make a visualization accessible, best practices call for including a few sentences of text that describe the chart and a...

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When politics is local in the Middle...
As the old adage has it, all politics is local. That might seem a quaint idea in an age of social media and global connectivity. And yet, as a study co-led by an MIT political scientist finds, it may describe Middle East politics more accurately than many people realize. More specifically, sectarian identity in the Muslim world — especially the split between the Shia and Sunni sects of Islam — is often described as a transnational matter, in which...

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First-year students take center stage on Killian...
On a chilly Monday in May, MIT’s Killian Court was transformed into a festival of fun. Over 1,200 members of the community enjoyed hot dogs, fried dough, and bouncy castles before cozying up on picnic blankets to watch the main event. First-year students took to the stage to perform skits — or “PLAYsentations” — demonstrating the toys they created this semester in mechanical engineering class 2.00b (Toy Product Design). For the 150 students in the class, presenting in front...

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Cracking the case of Arctic sea ice...
Despite its below-freezing temperatures, the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. As Arctic sea ice melts, fewer bright surfaces are available to reflect sunlight back into space. When fractures open in the ice cover, the water underneath gets exposed. Dark, ice-free water absorbs the sun’s energy, heating the ocean and driving further melting — a vicious cycle. This warming in turn melts glacial ice, contributing to rising sea levels. Warming climate and rising...

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Inaugural Day of AI brings new digital...
The first annual Day of AI on Friday, May 13 introduced artificial intelligence literacy to classrooms all over the world. An initiative of MIT Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE), Day of AI is an opportunity for teachers to introduce K-12 students of all backgrounds to artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in their lives. With over 3,000 registrations from educators across 88 countries — far exceeding the first-year goal of 1,000 registrations in the United States...

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Engineers develop nanoparticles that cross the blood-brain...
There are currently few good treatment options for glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer with a high fatality rate. One reason that the disease is so difficult to treat is that most chemotherapy drugs can’t penetrate the blood vessels that surround the brain. A team of MIT researchers is now developing drug-carrying nanoparticles that appear to get into the brain more efficiently than drugs given on their own. Using a human tissue model they designed, which accurately replicates...

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